The Cruella Scenes That Had To Be Cut From The Movie
Disney's most recent release, "Cruella," represents the long-awaited attempt to humanize and complicate a character best-known for her irrational obsession with the mass-skinning of adorable puppies. Now that it's here, most fans agree that the Emma Stone-led character study of the classic "101 Dalmatians" villain pretty much works, thanks in no small part to the charisma of its leading lady.
Directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, "Cruella" depicts the early life of Cruella de Vil (Stone). Before she was Cruella, she was Estella Miller, an orphan with dreams of becoming a fashion designer. The tragic death of her mother at a young age and her time spent working for the narcissistic-yet-renowned fashion designer Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson) puts her on a path to becoming the Cruella that "101 Dalmatians" fans love to hate.
With a runtime of 134 minutes, "Cruella" is by no means a diminutive film, but it still manages to pack a lot into its space, giving viewers a story that spans from Cruella's childhood into her early adulthood. With so much meat in the theatrical cut, fans might be surprised to learn that a few key bits actually didn't make it in. Director Gillespie recently revealed in an interview with CBR that there were actually a few moments that had to be trimmed, and one of them features the deliciously loathsome Baroness.
A Baroness scene ended up on the cutting room floor
In the interview with CBR, Gillespie began by revealing that he planned it so that there would be few scenes to cut. He explained, "I sit down and shot list with my DP, Nicolas Karakatsanis, and we figure it out. It's shot to edit. The way we shoot the scenes, we know which shot goes with which shot, so it all comes together."
Still, there is one fairly substantial scene that ended up being cut out of the film. After it was shot, Gillespie realized that it wasn't in keeping with the tone of the adjacent scenes, and that its inclusion would have felt jarring as a result. Gillespie described the cut scene, "I think there's one scene with the Baroness where she cuts up one of Cruella's designs. It's probably 45 seconds, and we lost that scene. It was modulating the humor in the third act."
In addition to the Baroness scene, there are a few lines here and there — mostly improvised by supporting actor Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Cruella's childhood friend Horace — that had to be cut out for similar reasons related to tone. On these lines, Gillespie said, "It was about how much we wanted to keep the gravity of what's going on versus having these punctuations of humor. That's the only stuff. There are some jokes from Paul that I loved in the third act, that just didn't fit the tone of where we were, at that point in the film. He's such a great improviser that there's endless alt lines from him."
All in all, it seems fans saw most of all the shot footage for "Cruella," though hopefully those missing seconds of Baroness will make it into the Blu-ray extras.